CHAPTER X
BEAUTIFUL SNOW
The girls had heard the boys who attended Salsette Academy mention that martinet, Major Pater. Although his infirmity—or injury—precluded his having anything to do with the drilling of the pupils of the academy, in the schoolroom he was the most stern of all the instructors at Salsette.
"Oh, poor Tommy!" gasped Betty, wringing her hands.
"Served him right," declared Louise. "He should not have played that trick. A lame man, too!"
"Oh, Louise!" exclaimed her sister Bobby, "Tommy didn't know it was an artificial limb he was stumbling over."
"And I'm sure I didn't know it was his old pegleg I tripped on twice," declared Teddy Tucker in high dudgeon. "What did he want to go to sleep for, spraddled all over the aisle?"
He said this in a very low voice, however; and he kept well behind Bob and the girls. As for Timothy Derby and Libbie Littell they actually never heard a word of all this! They sat side by side in one of the sections and read together Spenser's Faerie Queene—understanding, it must be confessed, but an infinitesimal part of that poem.
The other passengers near Major Pater, without any doubt, were vastly amused by his condition. The melting snow cascaded off his head and shoulders, and not a little of it went down his neck. Such a military looking and grim-faced man, standing so stiff and upright, seemed all the more ridiculous under these conditions.
"H-r-r-rrp!" barked Major Pater, glaring at Tommy Tucker as though his eyes would burn holes right through that boy's jacket.
Tommy sprang to attention. He was in citizen's dress, as was the major; but Tommy was sure the martinet knew him.
"What do you mean, young man, by pouring a bucket of slush over my head and shoulders?" demanded the angry Major.
"Please, sir, if you'll let me wipe it off"
Tommy had produced his own handkerchief and made a feeble attempt to attack the melting snow on the Major's shoulders.
"H-r-r-rrp!" barked the Major again, and Tommy translated it as meaning "as you were" and came once more to attention in the middle of the aisle.
One could not really help the angry gentleman, if one was kept standing in that ridiculous position. And the passengers near by were more amused than before by the attitude and appearance of the two engaged in the controversy.
"Are you aware of what you have done?" demanded Major Pater, at last. "Humph! Tucker of the Fourth, isn't it?"
"Ye—ye—yes, sir," gasped Tommy. Then: "One of the Tuckers, sir."
"Oh! Ah! Can there be two such awkward Tuckers?" demanded Major Pater. "Humph! Is this your father, Tucker?"
For by this time Uncle Dick saw what was going on and he approached, smiling it must be confessed, but with a towel secured from the men's lavatory.
"I am acting in the capacity of guardian for the present, sir," said Mr. Gordon frankly. "This is a ridiculous thing; but I do not think the boy quite intended all that happened."
At once he began flicking away the melted snow, and then rubbed Major Pater's bald head dry. All the time he continued to talk to the military academy instructor:
"I grant you that it looks very awkward on Tucker's part. But, you see, Mr.—er?"
"Ma—Major Pater!" stammered Tommy Tucker.
"Quite so. Major, of course. Major Pater, you will realize that the boy in coming along the aisleEr, by the way, Tommy, what were you coming for?"
"I was coming to you, Mr. Gordon, to show you how fast the snow was gathering. I—I scraped that ball of it off the step. The porter opened the door for me just a moment. I say, Mr. Gordon, it's a fierce storm!"
Tommy came through this explanation pretty well. Uncle Dick's understanding smile helped him a good bit.
"Quite so," said Mr. Gordon, and looking at Major Pater again. "Of course, I would never have known it was snowing if you had not undertaken to show me. But you see, Major Pater, your foot was sticking out into the aisle. I saw it. You have the misfortune to"
"Artificial leg, sir," growled Major Pater.
"Quite so. Well, accidents will happen, you know. There! You are quite dry again. I don't think you will get much sleep here until the porter makes up the berths. Suppose we go into the smoking compartment and soothe our minds, Major?"
"Ah—Humph! Thank you, Mr.—er?"
"Mr. Gordon," explained Tommy Tucker still standing as though he had swallowed a very stiff poker indeed.
"Ah! Glad to meet you, Mr. Gordon." They shook hands. Then Major Pater shot another command at Tommy: "H-r-r-rrp!" (or so it sounded) and the boy with vast relief dropped his stiff military pose.
The rest of the "live wire octette"—even Timothy and Libbie—were highly delighted by the outcome of Tommy's joke. For, if there is fun in such a practical joke as Tommy had tried to carry through, they thought there was double fun in seeing the biter bitten!
"Now will you be good?" crowed his brother, Ted. "See what you get for being so fresh! Tumbling over his game leg and pitching a wilted snowball at the Major's head. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
"Oh, hush!" grumbled Tommy. "You needn't say anything. He doesn't know which of the Tucker twins it was crowned him with that snowball, and you are just as much in his bad books as I am. Remember that."
"Listen to him!" cried Ted, at once feeling abused. "And Major Pater is near-sighted, too, although he scorns to wear glasses. You've got me into a mess, too, Tommy Tucker."
"There! There!" said Betty Gordon, soothingly. "Never mind. Uncle Dick will smooth him down. But I do think, boys, that you need not have got into trouble at all."
"Huh! that's our natural state." observed Teddy. "Boys out of trouble are like fish out of water. So my dad says. And he ought to know," he grinned. "He has twins."
Tommy considered, however, that he had got out of a bad box pretty easily.
"Your Uncle Dick is fine, Betty," he observed. "Think of his getting on the blind side of Major Pater so easy. But cracky! how that snow did squash all over him," and he ended with a wicked giggle.
"One of your instructors, too!" exclaimed Louise. "For shame!"
"My!" chuckled Bobby, "what we'd like to do to Miss Prettyman at Shadyside!"
"I am afraid Miss Prettyman is no more beloved than Major Pater is."
"Never mind, you girls!" interrupted Tommy, with renewed interest in the storm and trying to peer through the window. "It's a regular blizzard. When the porter opened the door of the vestibule for me to get that snow, I thought he wouldn't get it shut again."
"Suppose we get stalled?" questioned Louise, inclined to be the most thoughtful of the party.
"Well, suppose we do?" returned Bob. "I tell you we are all right for food, for the dining car"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Tommy put in. "The porter let me into a secret. The diner was dropped about thirty miles back. Broken flange of one wheel and no time, of course, to put on a new wheel."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Betty. "I begin to feel hungry already."
"Of course, we'll pick up another diner?" asked Libbie, though rather doubtfully.
"We'll hope so!" Bobby cried.
"If we get through to Tonawanda, yes," said Tommy Tucker. "That's what the porter told me. "But we don't get there, if we are on schedule, until eight o'clock."
"There! I knew I was perishing of hunger," exclaimed Betty. "It's half past four already," she added, looking at her wrist watch.
"Three and a half hours to dinner time?" wailed Bobby. "Oh! That—is—tough!"
"That is, if we make the regular time," Bob said thoughtfully. "And right now, let me tell you, this train is just about crawling, and that's all. Humph! The soup sure will get cold in that dining car at Tonawanda, if it waits there to be attached to our train."
"Oh! Oh!" cried Bobby. "Don't let's think of it. I had no idea that snow could be so troublesome."
"Beautiful snow!" murmured Betty. "Say, Libbie. Recite that for us, will you? You know: the poetry about 'Beautiful Snow.' You or Timothy should remember it."
"Pah!" exclaimed Bobby, grumblingly. "I'll give you the proper version:
"Beautiful snow! If it chokes up this train,
It certainly will give me a pain!"
"Goodness me, Bobby!" retorted her cousin, Libbie, "your versifying certainly gives me a pain."